sevenspark said
That being said, I do think we could do better here with a bit of a primer – a ThemeForest/CodeCanyon 101 if you will. I think as the market expands and more and more people build web sites, the median entry level of expertise is decreasing.
[Maybe we could get a solid, straight to the point welcome video? People like videos; they hate reading]

This is a great idea. What would be cool is if the user was automatically shown a marketplace specific video based on the site they were on when they signed up. Then marketplace-specific things could be covered in the video, i.e. the difference between a jQuery plugin and a WordPress plugin, etc.

VF said
I think the reason for such high number of mistaken purchases are due to false advertisements made by 3rd parties who targets referrals. I am not sure that is the only reason but looking at how many unknown friends referring our files, this also could be the reason. Such cases, buyer’s may not go completely through item description and assume the category name they looked at 3rd party sites.

That’s a very good point. A lot of those sites are irresponsible. It’d be interesting to match referrals to mistaken purchases and see what the correlation is.

+1 never thought about this but it’s an interesting point. Another great reason for an introduction video.

Too bad there’s no required check box before transferring to PayPal, etc that says something like “I have read the item description and understand that this item is STANDALONE . This means I should ABANDON any expectation of this item working within other software such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc AS IS .”

If not checked then the order can’t proceed. This checkbox / text would only need to appear if an item was marked “StandAlone” (item / script) in the author’s dashboard. Otherwise there would be no change to the normal checkout process. Not that obtrusive, overly negative but might reduce / eliminate such orders.

Maybe checking a box is too easy. Perhaps, having to actually type in uppercase “I AGREE ” would be more effective? Anyway, those are my thoughts / suggestions. Hope it helps.

I think the current system does more than enough to alert people of an item’s compatibility with WordPress. I personally tend to believe most of the people who make this “mistake” are just after free stuff because they almost always ask for a “free copy of the wordpress version.”

It’s just a product of organization unfortunately. If this was JUST a WordPress marketplace, then we wouldn’t have issues, but because it’s a multi-format site that is where things become tricky and have to be left to buyers to read and look.

HOWEVER , saying that, there are many things Envato could do to help the situation. Color coded pages based on format (blue for WordPress etc) or a banner identifying the product type at the top of the page surely wouldn’t be that difficult – we have ones for elite authors, photo dune sales, birthday offers etc – why not “This is a WordPress Theme – click to learn more” drops down to explain it DOESN ’T work on WordPress.com etc but this would not take them off the page.

Really it boils down to the fact that Envato have needed a strong team of GUI / UX specialists on team for years…

TylerQuinn said
I personally tend to believe most of the people who make this “mistake” are just after free stuff because they almost always ask for a “free copy of the wordpress version.”

If you have both versions of a script maybe. But for someone like myself who doesn’t the mistakes are genuine.

Was thinking about this thread some more today. If it’s happening to a medium-sized author like myself, the amount of people making this mistake on a daily basis must be quite large. Jonathan has some nice ideas and honestly I’m not sure what the best solution is, but I’m convinced that we need to do something to try and prevent these mistakes from being made.

I’ve had multiple buyers trying to upload my Magento frontend to WordPress because they don’t understand these are different platforms. I usually refer them to the knowledge base page about refunds, while knowing they’re ineligible because they’ve already downloaded the file.

This situation is the buyer’s fault, but Envato’s problem. Everyone is responsible for their own knowledge. It’s not the kindest truth, but I don’t think putting “Not WordPress compatible” tags on everything is the solution.

jonathan01 said
It’s just a product of organization unfortunately. If this was JUST a WordPress marketplace, then we wouldn’t have issues, but because it’s a multi-format site that is where things become tricky and have to be left to buyers to read and look.

HOWEVER , saying that, there are many things Envato could do to help the situation. Color coded pages based on format (blue for WordPress etc) or a banner identifying the product type at the top of the page surely wouldn’t be that difficult – we have ones for elite authors, photo dune sales, birthday offers etc – why not “This is a WordPress Theme – click to learn more” drops down to explain it DOESN ’T work on WordPress.com etc but this would not take them off the page.

Really it boils down to the fact that Envato have needed a strong team of GUI / UX specialists on team for years…

Jonathan

Envato really need to do a lot of stuff to be honest, and this should be one of them – your idea is fantastic.

This situation is the buyer’s fault, but Envato’s problem. Everyone is responsible for their own knowledge. It’s not the kindest truth, but I don’t think putting “Not WordPress compatible” tags on everything is the solution.

That only perpetrates the WordPress-centricity of ThemeForest.

I hear what you’re saying. Maybe this is why the “new member” videos would work best. Because if an author sells Joomla plugins, they probably don’t want to draw attention to WP in any way.

The video idea would take some work but I think it could pay off in the long run because it could cover so many things that would be important to a new buyer.

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